


Inside the Minds of Republic City's Most Influential

by guileheroine



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Interview, News Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 10:26:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5087041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guileheroine/pseuds/guileheroine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A few months on from the overthrow of the Earth Empire, Republic Tech catches up with Future Industries' president Asami Sato. // Enough saving the world! Avatar Korra finally sits down for her first exclusive interview with the Republic City Times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Asami Sato

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty experimental so heads up - I wanted to emulate the distinctive way that interview features/editorials are written (like 'highbrow' magazine journalism that comes with exclusive photoshoots, you know what I'm talking about), and in doing so attempt an 'outsider' POV of characters we're used to a more internal view of. ([MediAvengers](http://www/mediavengers.tumblr.com/) is a good example.)
> 
> In that vein, here is a industry writer person interviewing happy, stable Asami. Implied Korrasami. Imagine it in a nice colourful magazine spread. :)

_She's had the reins of one of the world's biggest companies since she was a teen. Now, with both business and pleasure firmly in her hold, Asami Sato talks to us about perseverance, privacy and paralleling the Avatar._

 

It may be my umpteenth time venturing into Republic City's preeminent corporate enterprise, but it’s the first with the woman behind Future Industries herself.

 

My subject is running uncharacteristically late. An aide ushers me into the elevator anyway. The 15th floor office I’m shoved into to wait is spacious and well-lit, with an arch window that spans half of the outer wall allowing the late spring sunset to illuminate the room. The suite is sparsely but deliberately furnished, every element fit for purpose - no excessive tapestry or drapery, but there are two desks evenly covered; no more than three seats around a coffee table (a small audience for a president), but they’re of soft black suede, designed for comfort. I note this as I take a seat.

 

There's a strict scheme to the framework of this space (no woodwork that isn’t mahogany, no fabrics that aren’t black or red) but the elements that fill it (blueprints held in place by mugs and notebooks, a pair of heels leant against the sofa) are indicative of a more pliant existence. It’s only a few months that this tower has been the permanent Future Industries headquarters, but the office feels as if it’s been - not lived in, exactly - but made regular, willful use of for years. The dishevelment is not manufactured, but it somehow highlights the sleekness rather than detracting from it. A delicate balance of calculated elegance and almost vintage comfort. In other words, this office is a lot like Asami Sato: well-organized, warm, fashionably modest, good at its job and old for its age.

 

When Ms Sato does arrive, it’s in a flurry of apology. “I was just locking the shop up,” she says with a polite smile, indicating the direction of her private workshop as she takes a seat opposite me. She pauses to straighten the heels by the seat on the way. “I want to leave everything in its right place so I can really enjoy tonight.”

 

Tonight (of the day we are speaking) will be the presidential gala that marks the alliance between the new Earth Republic and the United Republic and celebrates the remarkable progress that the city has made in the restoration efforts since the dissolution of the Earth Empire. Future Industries has been at the forefront of this effort. Asami Sato looks tired but very genuinely pleased, in a way that makes you think she only lets herself feel pleased when she’s worn herself out.

 

These last few days preceding the celebration have been work non-stop, she tells me as she makes herself comfortable. I introduce myself properly and she does the same (“just call me Asami, I’m too exhausted for that.”)

 

“Go easy on me,” Asami says with a quirk of her brow, and I don’t know if it’s a reference to her tuckered out state or the fact that she’s giving me a more-than-just-business interview, a first for this private and altogether atypical magnate.

 

Asami Sato has the impressive distinction of being the youngest independent president in the history of our industry, but it’s a circumstance difficult to divorce from the darker details of her family and company’s past. Having lost his wife to an attack by a bending triad when Asami was only six, the now late Hiroshi Sato became involved in secret with the Equalist movement. His daughter, contrary to his wishes, aligned against him and with the newly arrived Avatar. When the revolution disintegrated following the overthrow of its leader, Sato was imprisoned for providing the movement with significant technological power. The task of navigating the professional fallout as well as the personal fell to Asami, a rather overwhelming prospect for any nineteen year old girl.

 

The above is all the detail she gives me; nothing she knows you or I wouldn’t already know.

 

It’s not hard to see why Ms Sato’s publicist warned me not to press this particular topic, but it’s not my interest today, not with the notion of renewal and restoration in the air.

 

It’s something Asami knows a lot about. “I’m happy working. I’m really happy designing, or even having meetings and doing administrative stuff, if it’s productive. But the really difficult thing has been translating that into a new - into the right image for my company. Because that’s what matters and that’s where we took a blow. You have to calculate every last detail if image is what you’re looking to rebuild.” She speaks with an unpractised candour, and I wonder if she purposely scheduled this interview at the end of her workday so she’d be loose enough not to fret about oversharing.

 

Before we continue, I ask her if she could provide any sample of her personal work to print along with the portraits taken earlier this week. “You _are_ a tech magazine,” she acquiesces, waving me over to her desk (the second desk, bigger, to the side, and it’s apparent from the new proximity that this is for the _science_ part of her work and the other the _business_.) It’s also easier to see that 1) there are several different projects spread out over this table and 2) Asami Sato really is a savant.

 

She reaches into a drawer and hands me a folder across the desk. “These are all the earliest designs for the wingsuits I made for the airbenders,” she says. “They’re super easy to follow, and it wasn’t a company project so much as a personal one. I’ll get them sent to copy for you.” Then she offers me tea and I leaf through her work as she makes it herself from an electric kettle.

 

I note down what she says about the project: it functioned as a diversion from her ‘real work’ when she needed a break; it was nice to have a reason to visit Air Temple Island again (her home for a while; Team Avatar’s base); materials was the most challenging aspect of the design. I watch as she prepares the tea as methodically as if she were drawing up a blueprint. She is dressed in her business best, blemished only by a few ink stains on her hands, hastily rolled sleeves and the goggles pushed back in her hair from her time in the shop. Not as immaculate as the photos might tell you, but in the flesh, Asami Sato is disarmingly beautiful.

 

Unique professional responsibility aside, there’s no doubt that youth and beauty and talent have played more than a small part in the interest behind the woman since Future Industries fell into her care. When I ask why she has disclosed so little of her personal life over the years, she gives me a wry smile. “I don’t know if I’ve had much of a personal life to speak of! And we didn’t get this company back where it is by sitting around - I really have been working more than anything.”

 

“People wanted to know what I thought of my father,” she says (though she doesn’t tell me, either), “and why I didn’t hand all this off to someone who knew what they were doing, and what someone like me was doing single, or whatever else. But I don’t know if my private life as it actually existed would have interested them.”

 

And as it exists?

 

Her lips purse before setting in a smile. “I am very fortunate to feel the most successful and most unfearful I’ve felt in years,” she says, so earnest that I don’t want to press the question any further. “I have my city back and friends and the luxury of evenings off, and that’s all I want.”

 

So what does the CEO of Future Industries do with her free time? “You know what, I think the reason I’ve been able to work as much I have is that I really do love my work. I’m tinkering in my shop at home a lot of the time, too - it’s relaxing, it makes for good alone time. I like alone time. Driving is good for that, too. If you ever need to clear your head, go for a drive along the bay and into the mountains at night.” She jests that she “came out driving”, and makes it sound charming. “I’m actually teaching Bolin to drive right now.”

 

That’s Bolin the mover star/former pro-bender, whom she counts as a longtime friend. (The Fire Ferrets, the team that once consisted of Bolin, his brother Mako and the Avatar, was sponsored by Future Industries - and Asami’s considering sponsoring again, “even though I have no idea who’s on those teams anymore.”) “I’m not a recluse, despite what the press will you. I do love spending time with my friends, I just don’t have a horde of them. You can’t go out alone, and I like that some nights, so I’ll take friends out for dinner if they’re free.”

 

I ask after her acquaintance with the Air Nation. She corrects me on the term _acquaintance_. “Tenzin’s family are the only family I’ve known in years. I know people might think it’s a more formal relationship through Team Avatar, but they’re my friends. I was there when we rescued the first new airbenders from Ba Sing Se. There’s a room for me on Air Temple Island.”

 

“Everybody I know is busy so the nicest thing we can do sometimes is sit and hang out. I try to see everyone regularly - Mako and I meet for lunch since Chief Beifong’s new headquarters are just down the street, and Korra stays with me when she can’t be bothered to cross Yue Bay again after work.”

 

At this point, as at a couple of other points of our meeting, she takes a pen, book or sheet of paper from the desk and stores it away. I recall what she said about leaving everything in its right place. I suspect that Asami, like many scientists-turned-businesspeople, prefers not to have outsiders looking after her workspace. The neat side of her desk is extra neat: a Future Industries table clock, a tray of the most essential drawing equipment, a holder of identical pin-sharp pencils, car keys, hand lotion, a tube of lipstick - all in a row. Pinned above these is a sketch of the Republic City skyline and a mini calendar with the dates drowned by neat handwriting. My eyes alight on the photo next to these: Asami Sato and Avatar Korra - close and close-cropped, stunning, formal dresses and easy smiles. Unless you’ve been camping out in the spirit wilds for the last few months, you’ll know of the nature of the chatter following this duo. For me it might suffice to say that it’s for a lesser journalist to speculate. Asami catches my gaze. “That was Varrick’s wedding,” she says, without a hint of anything else.

 

I dive on the mention of Varrick. She’s happy to be forthright about the man’s hand in her past missteps, likely because her company is far out of those woods at this point, and because “nothing touches Varrick, anyway.” Her tone is resigned, but not truly affected. “I’m not jumping to work with him, but I’ve wiped the slate clean. I’ve gotten this far by learning, and the only way to learn and grow is make your mistakes. So maybe I’m better for it in the long run? I should thank him!” It’s a joke, of course, but it’s almost paradoxically polite.

 

This attitude is emblematic of her grander outlook on the last few years: it’s been tough, but she came out tough. (Though you’d be hard pressed to find a softer-spoken CEO.) Arguably, no challenge has been tougher than that of turning around her empire’s image.

 

According to Asami, the greatest opportunity to transform the public perception of her company came when Future Industries was contracted by President Raiko to help redesign the infrastructure of the city following the Harmonic Convergence spirit vine crisis. She claims she shaped her life around this project for a while. At my request, she describes the undertaking at length, slipping far into the technical at times and then catching herself with an apologetic smile. “Anyway, it’s _civic_ , you know. So it’s like giving back to the city, to the community. Like atonement. That’s how people end up seeing it, whether they know it or not. And that’s a much better way to get back through to a consumer than saying, ‘hey, you can trust me, I’m transparent.’”

 

I ask her if uncertainty on the image front is what resulted in her shrouding her personal life in mystery - after all, wouldn’t publicising her contribution to Team Avatar have helped relieve some of the worry that she was harbouring sentiments similar to her father’s? She frowns. “I think people will assume the worst if you say, ‘look at me, I’m doing this’ - they’ll know you have an agenda. I have to let our work speak for itself because it can’t lie.” She avoids my eyes as she says this, finally taking her goggles out of her hair and sweeping it back into a ponytail. Instantly, she’s older. “With Team Avatar, that’s me helping my friends. I don’t want to point an arrow to it and use a part of my personal life like that. It’s not charity work just because I provided material help. It’s not a political statement just because I’m a nonbender. I didn’t say a word to a reporter about it and there were people happy to decide, _she’s trying so hard_ , _she’s overcompensating_ or _she’s just a token_. So can you imagine how much worse it would have been if I did dress it up?”

 

She explains this patiently, with a kind of wisdom. It leaves a deeper impression on you than if she had related it with force, and I remind myself that this woman who rethroned the most powerful business conglomerate of the city in three years is only twenty-two.

 

I inquire if what she has just described was the philosophy behind her reticence when asked about the statue of Avatar Korra in the park renamed for it. The project was funded by Future Industries but she provided almost no comment of her own at the time. Maybe if she’d tried to explain what she was doing, it would have been taken as an attempt to erase the last vestige of anti-bending sentiment from her name, by literally building up the Avatar?

 

The question upsets her composure more than the last, but she recovers quickly. “That - wasn’t really my thinking behind it. I didn’t have an agenda other than I thought that Korra deserved it and President Raiko agreed. I don’t think it would have been my place to run a commentary over it because Korra wasn’t there and it wasn’t for us to dictate what her identity should be, or encourage speculation about her future, even if we did want to honour her. We opened it with the new roads and the spirit wild tours by the airbenders because all of those things were Korra’s doing in a way, you know? It was a good way to play it, since people had been so off about the spirits before and it was important to Korra to see them integrated. Anyway - I’ll talk about it now, because she’s back. But at that time I just felt it wouldn’t have been respectful to my friend. It was about letting what she had achieved speak for itself.”

 

Still: isn’t it rather poetic that a non-bending industrialist helped not only realize the Avatar’s vision for the world but sustain the world’s vision of _her_ , here in the very city where technology had not long ago finally escalated the case _against_ bending?

 

She smiles her truest smile so far before I’ve even finished posing this last notion. If in her reserved, eloquent nature Asami Sato appears deceptively matured most of the time, there are certain moments, split-seconds, where the widening of her eyes or the colour in her cheeks make the opposite true.

 

“Well, I think,” she declares, “that anyone who thinks the idea of bending and of balance - the Avatar’s role in keeping balance - precludes modernity or technology or whatever you wish to call it, is mistaken about how the world works. Maintaining balance isn’t about keeping the world as it is, but figuring out how every new component of it will coexist, and that includes electric cars no less than it does the new spirit portal.”

 

“It isn’t just the Avatar’s responsibility - it’s all of ours. I’m doing my part through this,” she gestures across the desk, “because it’s what I know best.”

  
Asami Sato is twenty-two, but she’s smarter than you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! There should be another chapter where "I" will "interview" Korra.


	2. Avatar Korra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A satisfied Korra interview to go with the Asami one.

_In her element: In a fleeting few years, she's changed the world(s) more than most of us could have ever imagined. Over half a year after her return to Republic City, we catch up with the Avatar as she gives us Varri-cakes and verdicts on everything from parents to politics._

 

It’s too late to call our breakfast appointment anything but lunch, but Avatar Korra is hardly bothered when she greets me with a handshake and a smile to match the sun outside.

 

“Sorry! Late night, you know? I’ll buy you lunch!” A declaration, not an offer.

 

I’ve never met the Avatar before, but I’ve met enough people to know that I haven’t met anyone like her.

 

We slide into a booth of her choice, the one by the window where she spies some bruncher’s _City Chronicle_ left on the table. (“I wanna see if I recognise any of this week’s players,” she says, referring to the pro-bending league table at the back of the paper, “any dark horses. Asami was telling me she wants to sponsor,” - that’s Sato, who dropped her off on the way to the park - “but neither of us has really been in the loop for years. I used to know everything!”) But she’s starving, she admits, “let’s order first, then talk.” She hands me the menu before I think to pick it up. The Avatar asks for pan-fried duck noodles, vegetable dumplings and the Southern Water Tribe-style five-flavor soup she wants us to share. A pot of jasmine tea completes her order.

 

“I literally _always_ just have the seaweed noodles here and I’m kind of sick at myself for it,” she says, exhibiting a conscious air of sheepishness, “so I figure I should try something different.”

 

She doesn’t look apologetic, though. As in every photograph, radio soundbite or - yes, fifty foot statue - you’ve experienced of her, Avatar Korra exudes a certain self-possessed dynamism in person. It’s an elemental (pardon us), intrinsic kind of power; curiously tempered by the youthful, plainspoken appeal of her mannerisms. She dresses casual and doesn’t hesitate to dig right in when our food arrives.

 

I don’t need to question her to know that Avatar Korra doesn’t do anything by halves. In the few years since her departure from the White Lotus compound where she was raised and trained, the Avatar has saved the city (and the world) a few times of over, conquered zealots aplenty and her own affliction at the hands of her enemies, and - perhaps most radically, controversially - done away with the separation of the human and spirit worlds. If you’re thinking, well, it’s only the job of such a singular post as the Avatar to do such singular things, you might be forgetting that the last time the two worlds were open to one another was 10,000 years ago. The Avatar might actually agree with you though: “I used to worry about if I even understood enough to be going through with those kinds of decisions. I thought I ruined everything after the vine infestation in the city. But I’m the bridge between the worlds so it’s my job to make those calls on everyone’s behalf. Even if I don’t make the right call every single time, they’re my calls to make, I realized. So I feel better about my intuition. Who’s going to know if the Avatar doesn’t?”

 

We’re sitting in Narook’s Waterfront Cafe, the newer bayside cousin of Narook’s Seaweed Noodlery. It’s very Republic City for an authentic Water Tribe establishment, which is not a bad description for the Avatar herself. It’s the midday after the presidential gala held in celebration of the progress the city has made in the last few months, and the nation’s alliance with the brand new Earth Republic. Avatar Korra was of course in attendance last night, along with the newly returned, newly abdicated Earth Prince and other dignitaries and figures key to the restoration effort. As any of the morning’s papers will tell you, it was the first festivity of its kind that the city has seen in a while - the Avatar’s tardiness is more than excusable, if not expected. (“Mornings don’t really agree with me anyway, though,” she tells me later.)

 

The woman of the hour of the last six months turns to me. “You know you’re my first real interview? I’ve only ever done, like… press conferences in the past.” I wonder if that’s by choice. “Well, before I left for the South Pole, the press and I weren’t exactly the best of friends. So that’s probably why. I mean, I don’t know if I’d have bought any reporters lunch after Harmonic Convergence,” she laughs. “Did you know I was polling at _eight percent_ for a while?!”

 

It’s quite the contrast to today. “But it was touch and go from the beginning,” she insists. “I learned that pretty early on.” She was green and eager to please, she admits, when she first arrived in the city. But the popularity she achieved with the quashing of the Equalist revolution was short-lived, with both the public and the president placing the blame of the spirit vine crisis squarely on her shoulders not half a year later. The Avatar’s acclaim first truly skyrocketed following her overthrow of the Red Lotus and deliverance of the new Air Nation, during her subsequent convalescence in the Southern Water Tribe. “And that probably wouldn’t have happened if I didn’t get hurt so bad,” she says, making no bones about it.

 

Avatar Korra’s public reputation has indeed been rather mercurial over the years. Which, she explains - setting the most solid pair of blue eyes on me - is exactly how she she knows it’s not really worth her while.

 

“I care about it to the extent I have to in order to do my job well. Everyone has their own ideas about not just what I’m supposed to do, but what I’ve _done_. Everyone has their own ideas about what balance even means. When I decided to leave the spirit portals open, it looked like progress to some people, and some people like the airbenders were happy about it. And there were others who thought it was the worst thing ever and still do. You can’t ever please everyone, so it serves no one’s interests for me to try and explain myself to those who I don’t please.” She rests her fork on her plate and her chin on her hand, ruminative. “I remember a few years ago, when the spirit vine stuff was really eating me... Tenzin pointed out how it’s not actually my responsibility to worry after every single person’s problems, but judge everything on balance, as a whole. That’s what I have to keep in my mind, and it doesn’t leave much room for concerns about my reputation!”

 

So it’s about perspective? “Yes! Let me tell you, poll numbers don’t mean a thing when there’s an actual violent threat to safety or harmony or whatever around. And that’s what I have to worry about.”

 

In any case, Avatar Korra hasn’t had to fret about poll numbers or violent threats of late. Her focus since the disintegration of the Earth Empire and the imprisonment of its commander has largely been on rebuilding. This weekend, she returned with the Earth Prince and Metal Clan leader Suyin Beifong from a trip to Ba Sing Se to oversee the inauguration of the permanent, centralized Earth Republic government. “If you asked me a few years ago, I’d’ve said that the political part of my job is my least favourite,” the Avatar tells me, “but I’m so much better at it now, I really _am_ , and it feels nice not to have to fight all the time or worry about evil spirits or anything else that’s too far beyond the rule of just diplomacy and dialogue. I don’t think I realized how much I needed a break from that stuff until I got one!”

 

On the note of breaks, I return to the party last night. Specifically, how she’s managing with its host. The relationship between the President and the Avatar, perhaps the city’s two foremost political leaders, has famously not been easy. Avatar Korra raises her eyebrows over her teacup when I bring this up, and points me to the newspaper left on our table. “ _Raiko and the Avatar welcome Prince Wu as Earth Republic ambassador_ ,” she reads a subheading, “ _Chief Beifong honored by president and Avatar in city celebrations._ You see how much a team we have to be now that I’m back in the city. I don’t think we're ever gonna be buddy-buddy,” she says with a sly quirk of her mouth. “But I know that we respect each other more than before, which is enough for me.”

 

By this point, the Avatar has set her tray aside, and she gestures to me to flip through more of the news feature. As we do so, she provides her personal assessments on more people than I can count on my fingers. Is it to be expected that the Avatar would make so many famous friends, or is that something that’s particular to Korra the woman?

 

She grins with enough charm that her reply is entirely unconvincing: “I definitely don’t make friends easy. Avatar Aang! He was more what you’re suggesting, far as I can tell. Maybe I inherited some of his connections? Tenzin’s family is my family,” she says warmly, pointing fondly to an image of the airbender and his eldest daughter. “I know Chief Beifong through them before anything, really. And Su - I’ve learnt a lot from Su. I’m glad she took a liking to me. Bolin!” A fond exclamation as she gestures to the mover star posing with Beifong and her daughter.

 

She looks up, sincere. “Mako and Bolin were the very first people I met when I came to Republic City. Like, met of my own voIition,” she corrects with a roll of her eyes that isn’t unkind, in reference to her infamous arrest by Chief Beifong and rescue by Tenzin upon her arrival in the city. “Anyway, I know that they’d have become my best friends whether I was the Avatar or not. And they taught me some moves.”

 

Indeed, the Avatar took the brothers’ pro-bending team, the Fire Ferrets, to the finals for the first time. “I think that was my real way into the city,” she says of pro-bending. “I mean, I was seventeen and had never been out in the real world - doesn’t make for a smooth talker. Pro-bending probably got my name around better than anything else and it was more fun than I knew you could have.” It’s probably needless to say that it was an enjoyable but short-lived venture. “No, I don’t think pro-bending was going to be my destiny.” Her voice rolls seamlessly from earnest to commanding. “I had bigger fish to _fight_. But it did change how I trained quite a bit.”

 

How  _does_ the toughest human being in the two worlds train? It’s surely of no surprise that the strong and undeniably stunning young Avatar has become an athletic inspiration for many.

 

Avatar Korra laughs, veering back to perky instantaneously with a playful flex of her arm. “Well, I can’t give that away!” She picks up her tea again. “The workout is very regular though the specifics depend on where I am and what else is on my schedule. But I will say this: if you’re going for a while and you break to meditate, your focus will improve a ton. It makes every second count twice as much.”

 

“That’s another thing I wouldn’t have told you a few years ago! I didn’t get the point of it at first, though I knew how to meditate into the Spirit World - meditation is something I really _learned_ the use of, especially when I was recovering. I’d try and use it just to sort of - escape out of myself for a bit - like, my body,” she intimates, sobering, “which didn’t quite feel the way I wanted it... But it did help me figure my mind out. And that _was_ the key to my body. Now it feels like the most me thing I can do is that meditation/workout thing!”

 

I indicate that it seems like an appropriate harmony given an Avatar’s expected skillset. “It is. The spiritual side and the physical - they’re more connected than you’d think and it helps them both to realize that. My mind is better when my body is better when my mind is better.” She states this so firmly that you feel more self-assured just listening - there’s a solidity in her expression that reads like wisdom for a moment. Then she finally turns back to the newspaper.

 

“Anyway, pro-bending. Future Industries sponsored us,” Avatar Korra segues perfectly when she flips the page to a photo of company CEO and another longtime ally, Asami Sato. “Asami’s best dressed, of _course_ ,” she says, skimming the caption with a twinkle in her eye. So how does the world’s chief representative of the spiritual take up with Republic City’s foremost, non-bending captain of industry? It’s not the most predictable partnership, particularly given the Sato name’s previous ties to the Equalist movement. I don’t pass up the opportunity to ask after Avatar Korra’s friendship with Ms Sato - after all, the _talk_ surrounding this pairing probably sold more than a few extra copies of this paper.

 

The Avatar is unfazed. “I love Asami,” she says, plainly enough to tell me that she’s either fully unaware of the speculation or that she really _doesn’t_ care. “She’s always had a lot on her plate, so she understands what’s on mine. That’s maybe the hardest thing to find in a friend when you’re in a position as unique as mine, but she always gets it. Neither of us has had the easiest time of it, you know, and she’s strong in some ways I’m lucky enough not to have to be,” she asserts, heartfelt in the way that only someone who cares as little for airs as she does could be. She places an (I suspect) unconscious hand over the photograph as she continues. “So I respect her integrity. I know it’s probably not the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think of Asami, but she’s a kind heart before anything else to me. Because even if we _were_ normal women, I know she’d still be as generous - she’s the sweetest girl in the world.”

 

(How’s _that_ for talk?) So certain rumours don’t bother the Avatar? She breaks into an abashed - and all too knowing - grin. “Hey - people know what they know!” You half expect her to wink.

 

And here Avatar Korra takes the last sip of her tea, not waiting a moment to order a replacement cherry berry lemonade. She buys me one, too, “for wasting your morning,” and tosses a couple of Varri-cakes (“is that a new flavour?”) into her order. The extra food is another sign that the Avatar’s in absolutely no hurry today. “I’ve got Team Avatar dinner tonight, at Air Temple Island, but that’s it.”

 

I’m curious to know what that actually constitutes: both Team Avatar and the dinner. The meaning of ‘Team Avatar’ has always been nebulous, she concedes. “That’s a good question. We thought it would be like, you know, Avatar Aang and his friends - the friends he had since before the end of the Hundred Year War, the travel fellows. That was me, Mako, Bolin and Asami, way back when! And Naga, of course.” (That’s her _most_ longtime companion, the polar bear dog she tamed herself.) “But the truth is there are others who have helped me so much - the Air family, Lin - so really it’s anyone that’s been on my side long enough. And dinner is whoever can make it! I thought it’d be nice since Su’s back in the city for a while and my parents are coming in later.”

 

Of course, travel from the South Pole is another thing the Avatar has made easier. She says she loves the benefit of being able to hop into the spirit portal and come out of another one halfway across the world in mere minutes. “I have a great relationship with my parents. They’re wonderful,” she enthuses. “I feel so lucky to have them because a lot of people I know don’t. And since I got back from the Southern Water Tribe, I tend to miss them more, so it’s awesome to be able to see them so easily.”

 

It’s apparent when you talk with her that Avatar Korra carries a true sense of gratitude with her - whether it’s about her parents, her friends, or even her rather extraordinary abilities. “I’m content and strong and I’m so thankful, of course I am.” It might not be the first thing you expect of her; an easy oversight when you consider her responsibilities and achievements and pure talent. “Maybe I liked to think myself more self-sufficient when I was younger, I don’t know. But you can’t go through what I’ve gone through and not come out with a sense of appreciation. I’m twenty-one and I’ve been through the _mill_. But all my faculties and my friends were there on the other side. And I came out better than ever.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


	3. Asami's spread

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not an additional chapter per se, but I wanted to share some mockups of Asami's interview as it might look on the page, featuring Fan Bingbing as a fan cast.
> 
> Scroll and enjoy!

 


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